Course Staff
Naír Carrera has been working as an educational expert and external consultant in European projects for the last years, particularly focusing on digital and innovative education, e-Learning, digital communications and teachers´ training in the Future Classroom Lab in Brussels. She joined European Schoolnet in 2015, where she works as a Pedagogical Officer and Coordinator of the pedagogical and educational strand of the European Commission´s initiative EU Code Week, and the School-Based case studies pilot in the School Education Gateway, the European Commission portal for teaching professional development. Before joining European Schoolnet, Naír worked as a teacher in international schools and universities of Spain, England and France, and joined the eTwinning National Support Service (NSS) at the National Institute for Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF) in the Ministry of Education in Spain, where she is also an online tutor.
You can follow her and get in touch here: https://twitter.com/Na_carrera
She is a Scientix Ambassador and Coding@schools eTwinning feature group moderator. She likes ICT and innovative teaching approaches. She has received a European Quality Label for her eTwinning projects and coordinated many coding and STEM projects. She believes in the role of educator of new generations for a better and responsible future.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stefania.altieri.1
Twitter: @Murzillo73
Website: https://stefaniaaltieri.atavist.com/an-innovative-teacher
James Callus is a Head of Department for Digital Literacy within the Directorate for Digital Literacy and Transversal Skills. He has over 20 years experience in the educational sector and together with the school leadership team, he endeavours to empower educators to effectively use digital technologies in teaching and learning. He also works with the Digital Literacy Education Officers in curriculum development to design learning programmes and exemplars focusing on specific learning outcomes. Throughout the year he is actively involved in the organisation of Digital Literacy Days, EU Code Week activities, Family Coding project, Robotics, eTwinning, Coding and Computational Thinking activities. As a Future Classroom local ambassador he promotes the FCL concept during teacher training sessions and is involved in a Future Classroom project in one of the schools he works in. He is also involved in training sessions for prospective teachers at the University of Malta.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/james.callus.7902
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Iwona Kowalik is a Maths and ICT teacher in Primary School no 16 in Wrocław, Poland. She has 23 years of experience as a teacher. She is a mentor in the Maths & Science team at the Academy of Talents and Abilities of Wrocław Department of Education. She found and participated in 20 eTwinning projects and she was awarded with 11 European Quality Labels. Iwona participated in many global projects (Edmodo, iEARN) and STEM events. She is a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert. She has participated in EU Code Week and Hour of Code since 2015. Iwona is a member of code related eTwinning groups (Coding@Schools, STEM, Programowanie z eTwinning). In 2018 she was awarded with the Certificate of Excellence in Coding Literacy and together with her school team was laureate of the competition of the Polish Ministry of Digitalization announced as a part of EU Code Week. Iwona is an author of the pilot subject “Coding” – the subject will be lead at her school since September 2019. She is passionate about using new technologies and coding activities to engage her students in a learning process. Iwona’s current intention is to convince as many teachers as possible to integrate coding in their classes and to promote coding.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iwona.kowalik.54
Twitter: @IwonaKow
Pauline Maas - moderator, Netherlands
Pauline Maas's roots are in ICT but she gave up her job to start teaching coding in school. “If I want to have more female colleges in ICT, I have to start in education.” So I did, and I'm teaching now for 15 years. This fall, I will start a new job as ICT teacher in a school for blind teenagers to learn how to code. That will be a big challenge.
Last year, my fifth book on coding for children was released. This last project is microbit101 with 101 projects to make for the microbit. A small mini computer that children from 10 years old can learn how to code. I give many workshops to teachers on how they can embrace coding and start coding projects in their schools.
I am MIEE for Microsoft for the 3rd year; I was an Education Pioneer in 15/16 and set up a makerspace in my school. Since fall I have been an EU Code Week ambasador.
Twitter: @4PIP
Website: www.4pip.nl
Cornelia Melcu is a primary school teacher in Școala Gimnazială Nr. 9 „Nicolae Orghidan” from Brașov, Romania. Additionally, she is a teacher trainer of the Preparatory Class Curriculum, Google Application in Education Course and European Projects Course, etc. She is mentoring newly qualified teachers and trainee teachers.
She is also a Scientix Ambassador in Romania, an eTwinning ambassador, an ESERO consul and an award winner in several competitions (eTwinning Awards, STEM Alliance Awards and national competitions). She has received a European Quality Label for her eTwinning projects and coordinated many STEM projects. Cornelia is currently involved in the Erasmus+ programme, using extracurricular activities and projects to motivate her students.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corneliamelcu
Twitter: @CorneliaMelcu
Kristi is an educational technologist at Märjamaa Gümnaasium in Estonia. In her school there are 553 students.
Since 2019 she has been a leading teacher of Code Week. Her work is to teach teachers, students and also parents to work with ICT, to implement coding in other lessons. She is also giving lessons with Lego WeDo, EV3, Ozobot, Cue, Dash, etc.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristi.metshein
Dimitra Pournara is an ICT teacher in the 17th Primary School of Larissa, in Greece. She has been teaching IT for 18 years in primary, secondary and higher education. She studied Informatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and holds a Master's Degree in Graphic Arts and Multimedia.
Dimitra participates in many educational projects, such as EU Code Week, Teaching with Europeana, Erasmus+, eTwinning and Teachers4Europe, and has coached teams for the WRO Educational Robotics Competition.
She strongly believes in the educational power of coding.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dimitra.pournara.1
Vasiliki Psaridou is a primary school teacher in Greece. She has 16 years of experience, 12 of which she has worked at a primary school teacher in a minority school in northern Greece. The last 4 years she has been sub-headmaster at her school. She teaches Greek language, History and Geography, and since there is no separate subject for ICT, she tries to enhance and motivate her students through ICT opportunities like EU Code Week. Her school has become a STEM 2.0 school in Greece for the 2019-2020 school year. She is a member of eTwinning and of related groups of eTwinning (Bringing e-safety into e-Twinning projects, Coding at schools, Entrepreneurship in education, Game-based classroom, STEM).
Her primary goal will be to give minority students and teachers a chance to learn as much as possible about coding and to assist them when and if necessary when participating in Code Week.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vasiliki.psaridou.3
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Teacher of English as a Second Language in a Plurilingual Primary School. 15 years of experience working as a teacher in the public education system. Master in Education and ICT. Leader in some work groups whose aim was ICT research and materials development. Teacher trainer in courses organised by the Galician Department of Education and online instructor for INTEF. Her deep interest in ICT has led her to develop many digital resources for the classroom. Isabel Blanco is in charge of the implementation of Robotics and Coding at her school. At present, she is also head of the Bilingual Project by which she teaches Art through English. Isabel is in constant search of ideas to encourage students’ creativity and critical thinking and to promote a less teacher-centred environment. Her current goal is to integrate coding in the classroom through the different subjects.
Twitter: @isabelbp
I am an ICT teacher in the 1st Primary School Čakovec and a project coordinator for many European projects. I regularly run coding workshops and summer coding camps for children. I am an author of much educational content and co-author of textbooks for computer science. I have a strong determination to accept challenges, to make changes by sharing knowledge and skills, learning the safe and responsible use of ICT and changing the world by creating our own software solutions.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ivana.ruzic.5
Teacher for 18 years in the first degree, he was able to teach with students from 3 to 13 years old. Director of a school for fifteen years in the Paris region, he became educational consultant for digital education. He is convinced of the need to promote coding and programming literacy in schools for all pupils from kindergarten to middle school and also for students with disabilities.
As a former ERASMUS student, he is convinced of the European exchanges for students. He sets up exchange etwining within his disctrict. in a group of reflection on robotics he can exchange with actors of the educational world of the second degree.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurent.tice
Twitter: @ToucheLaurent
Joaquim Trovão is an ICT (since 2005), Physics and Chemistry (since 1992) teacher in a Basic (from kindergarten to 9th grade) and Educational Territory of Priority Intervention (TEIP) School, in Casal de Cambra, near Lisbon, since 1995. He has 27 years of experience as a teacher. He is also a teacher trainer of digital tools and educational platforms. He is the coordinator of his school technological plan (since 2007), the DEL (Digital Era Lab) and the #AEiTec4all projects. In 2015 he was a member of “eTwinning seminar for teachers working at schools in disadvantaged areas”, in Hamburg.
Joaquim is a lifelong learner and believes Public Schools should use coding activities as promoters of multiple skills (problem-solving, creativity, innovation, cooperation, communication...) as a foundation for everyone to learn and continue to learn throughout their lives, defending equal opportunities. He believes we must adapt school and properly frame the learning of all of the students, with code activities, in order to better prepare them to overcome the challenges they will be confronted with. Whatever those challenges life will oblige them to overcome.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joaquim.trovao
Twitter: @jtrovao
Veronica is a primary school teacher with more than 15 years’ experience in education. She has a passion for inquiry-based learning (IBL), an approach she has adopted throughout her teaching career. She currently lectures in the area of IBL in early childhood education. She has also worked on the development and facilitation of continuous professional development courses in the area of STEM. For the last 2 years, as part of the Digital Schools Excellence Fund (an initiative of the Department of Education and Skills Ireland to promote the use of digital technology in teaching, learning and assessment), she has been lead co-ordinator for a cluster of schools implementing a range of collaborative digital projects including EU Code Week.
Twitter: @Legend_Veronica
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At European Schoolnet since 2012, he has been working in lots of different projects and initiatives. He has been more and more engaged in awareness raising, education and training projects, especially in the area of digital skills and coding. Currently he proudly supports the scale-up of EU Code Week.
Twitter: @tommaso_eun
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Konstantinos is working at European Schoolnet and coordinates the network of EU Code Week Leading Teachers.
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Adri works at European Schoolnet, coordinating the network of Ministries of Education representatives in the Code Week project and supporting the management of various other projects. While her background is personal development and empowerment through education, she is currently mostly involved in digitalisation and coding in schools.
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This course is produced by European Schoolnet Academy in collaboration with the University of Urbino, and with the support of GOPA Com. The course is part of the EU Code Week campaign, supported by the European Commission. The course is the sole responsibility of the organiser and the European Commission (EC) is not responsible for any use that might be made of the information contained.
